Israel is God's Time Piece

When Daniel prays, confesses, repents, and seeks the Lord in Daniel 9, he finds assurance of an answer from Him. The information he receives points to Jesus. This is a crucial point for Jewish people to understand, as the timeline is fixed in history to the exact time of Christ's arrival.

Daniel 9:24 (ESV) “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

Where the exile lasted 70 years, the time of atonement for sin and everlasting righteousness (God's gift through faith) would come 490 years later (70 - 7 x 7 weeks). But how are we to understand time according to this passage?

Well, Daniel is given further detail about those 490 years. The angel breaks it down:

Daniel 9:25–26 (ESV) Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.

The decree of Artaxerxes for Israel to return and rebuild Jerusalem occurred 49 years after the time of this prophecy, with Nehemiah in 445 B.C. Then 62 weeks, or 434 years, will encompass a time of building through trouble. If you add 49 to 434, you get 483 years. See what's missing? The final 7 years of the original 490 are spoken about by the angel in verse 24. 

Most believe the prince in verse 26, who destroys the city, is Titus, the Roman general who indeed destroys Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Notice also the exact wording Jesus uses regarding the beginning of birth pains in Matthew 24, describing it as a time of war and desolation. 

Matthew 24:7–8 (ESV) For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

The world has been covered with war and desolation in various places continuously throughout history since the time of Christ's resurrection. The next verse, however, is where we get the concept of a final "week" of severe trouble initiated by a world leader who will re-present the Roman empire, making Jerusalem desolate once more. 

Daniel 9:27 (ESV) And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

This "week" is that missing week from the 490 mentioned earlier. We call this time the tribulation. The time begins with an agreement between this world leader (the little horn from Daniel's visions in chapters 2 and 7) and the Jewish people. The same people who rejected Christ will covenant with the world leader because their temple and land were more critical than their eternal salvation. 

Notice Jesus' words in John 5:

John 5:43 (ESV) I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.

So, where are we now? We are in a special time that Daniel did not see. He, being a Jew, represented in this moment a blindness to the fact that God's people would be made up of both Jew and Gentile as one new body. We spread the message of God's salvation offered through the sacrifice of Jesus, who put away sin on the cross, and we keep our eyes on Israel, a nation still longing to rebuild the ancient ruins and resurrect their great temple. Jesus told us to keep watch and pray for when we see these things begin to happen, His return is very near. 

What an exciting time to behold. Come, Lord Jesus!